A question about timezones...?

Question

Let's say you have two timezones, Eastern and Central. The Eastern timezone would be Indiana, and the Central timezone would be Illinois.

Here's my question:

If you were to stand on the Indiana/Illinois timezone "divider line" at the time it gets dark in Indiana, would it be dark on the Indiana half of the sky and still light on the Illinois side since there is an hour difference in time? I'm assuming it would be pitch black on one side, and light on the other.

Answer 1

no.

Time is a man made convention....the earth cares nothing for what hour of the clock it is.

Answer 2

As the other two answerers have pointed out, time zones are man made artifacts.  Years ago, the decision was made that the longitude line running through Great Britain would be the origin for time throughout the world.  This worked out nicely, because that put the International Date Line on the opposite side of the world from Great Britain, a line running down the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where its effect would be minimal.

Since there are 24 hours in a day, the world was divided into 24 zones, each 15° of longitude in width.  So the center of the time zones became 15° west of Great Britain, 30° west of Great Britain, etc.  Ideally, each time zone would be the central longitude plus or minus 7.5°.

For example, in the United States, the center of the Central Time Zone is 90°.  Ideally, Central Time would extend from 82.5° west longitude to 97.5° west longitude.  But politics enters the picture.  In a lot of places in the United States, time zones are altered from the ideal to comply with state boundaries.

Some parts of the world feel that a difference of one hour is too much, so they establish boundaries between time zones every half hour.

The point of all this is that there is nothing magic about time zones.  As the Earth rotates on its axis, the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west.  The Sun and the Earth have no knowledge of time zones.  If you have ever stood outside your home and watched the Sun go down and the sky go from twilight to darkness, you know that the effect is gradual.  It doesn't matter whether you're outside your home, or standing on a boundary between time zones, the sky gets gradually darker after sunset.

Answer 3

YOU ASSUME INCORRECTLY. TIME ZONES ARE ARTIFICIAL, MAN MADE THINGS WHICH THE SUN IGNORES.